The present invention relates generally to motors such as DC brushless motors that have a printed circuit ("PC") board carrying a motor energization circuit, and more particularly to the manner of assembling the stator and PC board.
The manufacture and sale of small motors is a highly price competitive industry. Improvements in the manufacturing process which result in cost savings per motor will result in significant commercial advantage in the marketplace. Typically, the stator of a brushless DC motor is mechanically mounted to the PC board by means of motor support posts or lugs and is separately electrically connected to the PC board by soldering winding ends to connection points on the board. The mechanical mounting and electrical connection is ordinarily done by hand, which is not only time consuming but costly. Even if done automatically, the separate mounting and electrical connection of the stator and PC board, in dependent of soldering the energization circuit components to the board, requires too many time consuming steps.
It will be appreciated from the foregoing that a stator simultaneously mechanically mounted and electrically connected to a PC board in the manner of a circuit component either manually or, preferably, with automatic equipment such as wave soldering equipment, is a significant and valuable improvement contributing to lower assembly cost and greater reliability.